


he's my partner!

by Catznetsov



Series: sweetest place [2]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Soulmates, St. Louis Blues, Team Russia, Washington Capitals, World Juniors | World Junior Ice Hockey Championships, even more graphic descriptions of hockey games you don't remember
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-04-18 13:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21814168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catznetsov/pseuds/Catznetsov
Summary: Zhenya looks them up and as much down as he can manage. “You think your soulmates are Minnesotan, and you’re going to find them at 1AM wandering around the closed shops’ parking lots by the public rink,” he says.“Now you say that it does sound fake,” Dima says.“Oh no, that sounds like the way you would think to find your soulmate,” Zhenya says.
Relationships: Evgeny Kuznetsov/T. J. Oshie/Vladimir Tarasenko, Matt Niskanen/Dmitry Orlov, T. J. Oshie/Vladimir Tarasenko
Series: sweetest place [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1553392
Comments: 8
Kudos: 61





	1. Chapter 1

April 2009, World Junior Championships

Minnesota 

Dmitry crosses the world step by step, bus after bus and a hundred flights cutting back and forth over Russia. When he was little he used to lean his face against the windows and watch the icy sky for clouds which would blanket the city and bring a break in the cold, or the rare coincidence of contrails passing over them to the west or the east. While everyone is telling him how their soulmate’s tugging them to the next apartment block or the next town, Dima’s might as well try to pull him straight into the sky.

When he’s eighteen the Federation puts him on a plane, all the way to America. He spends most of a day in the air and probably scaring other passengers with the way he can’t stop squirming, finally feeling the pointed pull that every song on the radio seems to be about. Vova Andreyevich looks at him a little sideways, but shakes his head when Dima murmurs half an apology for bumping his knee. He only turns a little more towards Dima, setting his back against the chatter around them as the little rookie tries to explain a stick trick to some of the boys and almost falls across the aisle.

Once they’re in America it still takes a couple transfers and a bus to reach Minnesota. The team tumbles out of their seats and to the nearest beds, but Dima wants to wait in the garden out front as long as he can before curfew. The sticks of sleeping rose bushes and the mud around them are stiff with frost, but the sun is still in the sky after hours on the bus and he thinks the air here tastes like spring.

Dima doesn’t think he just thought that.

Someone taps him on the shoulder, and Vova says, “Dinner’s soon.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dima says, but he stays on the sidewalk, and Vova sits with him, folding his arms quietly around his knees and resting his chin on them.

“I put a jacket on the other bed so it looks like someone’s got dibs,” he says after a minute. “You can have that one.”

“Thanks man,” Dima says, pleased to be thought of. He bumps his shoulder into Vova’s side until Vova turns his cheek against his thick arms to show Dima the corner of a smile.

“That way neither of us have to room with the Wonder Baby,” he says, which startles Dima into giggling. They let the quiet settle back.

“Hey,” Dima says after a minute, bumping him again.

“Yeah?”

Dima hesitates, now he’s started, wanting to say it and to swallow it back. “I think I like it here okay.”

“Yeah.”

“My soulmate is American.”

Vova peeks at him, and presses that smile back into his arms to hide how it’s growing. “Yeah,” he says.

Finland and America are pretty good this year, but they are too. Coach is easy on the reins since they’re doing well, always reminding them that their creativity is an advantage over the Americans who learn to do everything how old men say. The rookie looks rapt in the front row, the only time he stops talking all week, and Dima rolls his eyes with Vova but the games are fun and Coach is too busy with the babies to notice if they sneak out of the hotel room at night, poking around the city.

Vova finds a map of the city in an Information kiosk and unfolds it, Dima picking a direction. Nowhere feels like he’s getting closer to his soulmate, like they’re waiting in another room, not just around the corner. Vova keeps turning in circles on the street, making Dima laugh and strangers skirt around them, but he says the same thing. They duck into McDonalds for hamburgers and sit in the neon light, Vova rubbing slowly at his face in sleepy wonder and Dima testing every sauce on his fries.

They beat the Americans, barely, on the last night of preliminaries, and they hang out with the boys a bit before it gets go too loud and the two of them take off, wandering the same general route around this part of the city as the first night. Dima knows they won’t find anything new, but the grey streets of little shops and slush already feel familiar. He’s going to miss Minnesota when they go. He lets them back into the room after, and as the door card beeps something squeaks behind them.

Dima turns around to find Zhenya Evgenyevich wearing a ratty shirsey that’s fading from red to hot pink and a scandalized expression. His bare feet are peeking out from equally oversized pajama pants and he’s clinging to a bottle of Mountain Dew, so Dima must have missed the sound of him coming down the hall from the vending machines, but that was also a whole hallway-length of time where the kid could have let them know he was there in any less dramatic way.

“For once in your very short life please be quiet,” Dima says, and sure enough the look of shock drops off the rookie’s face to be replaced by calculation.

“You shouldn’t be sneaking out,” Zhenya says. He tips his chin up to Vova, standing stocky silent beside Dima. “You actually believe in rules.”

“We literally just were sneaking out, you can’t call us squares,” Dima says. “Anyway we won so Coach doesn’t even care.”

“No, but if I tell Slava Solovyov he’ll tell Nikita Igorevich who’ll tell Slava Kalashnikov, who will tell Bobkov you skipped out after his win. You don’t want Bob to know you skipped out on his win,” Zhenya says, and blinks slowly like a cat. “I won’t.”

“We’re looking for our soulmates,” Vova admits, and Dima and Zhenya both turn to him.

“I just said ‘I won’t tell,’” Zhenya says. “You don’t have to lie.”

“He wasn’t, our soulmates are in Minnesota,” Dima confirms.

Zhenya looks them up and as much down as he can manage. “You think your soulmates are Minnesotan, and you’re going to find them at 1AM wandering around the closed shops’ parking lots by the public rink,” he says.

“Now you say that it does sound fake,” Dima says.

“Oh no, that sounds like the way you would think to find your soulmate,” Zhenya says.

“Oh, whatever,” Dima says, and turns back to pop the door open. 

“Fine,” Zhenya says, gathering his shirsey around himself like a robe and swirling off down the hall. Dima and Vova look at each other, laughing, and retreat into their room.

“You didn’t have to be mean,” Vova mumbles through a pillow, when the lights are off. Dima rolls over to look at the speckled ceiling tiles through the darkness. “You started it,” he mutters, but Vova only sighs, leaving him thinking. He doesn’t think he was too much, but he feels a little sorry anyway, down in his stomach. If he’s going to meet his soulmate soon he should be better than kid stuff.

First thing the next morning when Zhenya almost trips on the bus and spills the two hot drinks he’s simultaneously carrying on Dima’s stuff, Dima just catches and lifts him back upright, managing not to say anything rude. Vova watches the whole time, eyes on Dima’s hands on his skinny hips and lingering as Zhenya bounces on by them. “I really don’t think he’s going to do anything,” Dima tells him, and Vova just shrugs.

The second round of the tournament moves over to Fargo to meet the teams in the other group, and Dima feels shivery all over, like the someone in the next room has just come up behind him.

“But not, like, scary,” he tells Vova, who shrugs again.

The feeling lasts all through the series, building to a tingling fever pitch every time they take the ice. Dima’s soulmate is in the stands to see him, so he shows off.

Wandering around parking lots in Fargo isn’t any more revelatory than Minnesota.

The Americans aren’t better than they are. They’ve shown that in the other games, but maybe the US is less tired. The boys only manage a single goal, not the half a dozen in every other game of the tournament so far, and Dima and the other D still let in five, so they’ll slip down to silver. Everyone in the stands is cheering the Americans, and the thunderous sound and buzzing electric feeling makes it impossible to pin anything down.

Dima skates back and forth, wavering in and out of the line that’s slowly forming across the ice for their medal presentation, until the Slavas are looking at him sideways and Coach will have to notice soon. Dima can feel himself making little circles, like Vova had before, sure his soulmate’s somewhere close, looking for him, and seeking any sign to ground them both. 

He doesn’t hear Zhenya skating up until something bumps his side and bony little hands are pinching his cheeks.

“You could have just asked me how to find them to begin with, but whatever,” Zhenya mutters. “Dmitry, look at me. Stop, now close your eyes. Now try to think, very deeply, about your soulmate. Think about nothing but them, so amazing, very nice.”

Dima lets his eyes close, and leans into the feeling of someone, here in the metaphorical room with him, trying to let them know he knows they’re there before they even need to speak.

Zhenya kisses him square on the mouth, and kicks him in the shins.

The noise of the crowd dips in moderate interest, and returns to normal as the gold medals are handed out. Dima thinks about swearing, thinks about grabbing Zhenya, and just opens his eyes. Zhenya is hovering a safe distance away, behind Vova’s frozen bulk.

Dima runs his tongue around his mouth a couple times. He tastes, somehow, of Mountain Dew. “How’d you kick me when you had to stand on tiptoe?” he asks, and Zhenya sticks his tongue out at him.

“Now your soulmate knows nobody else is here felt that.”

The crowd clears out as they’re awarded their medals. Dima takes his and turns back to find someone standing in the mostly emptied row of seats right by the glass. He looks out of breath from running down the stairs against the flow of traffic, and he has one hand raised. After a moment he makes a fist and knocks politely on the glass.

Dima, shin still stinging, skates over. His soulmate makes an apologetic face at the feeling, so Dima smiles as wide as he can and pushes all the other thoughts in his head that suddenly outweigh the ache up against the bond so maybe his soulmate can see.

“Hi,” his soulmate says, through the glass. “Well, I felt all that, for sure. Or, uh—this is a bad time for the universe to tell me I should’ve stayed at U of M and taken Russian, huh?”

“Hi,” Dima says back, which was about as much as he followed of that. His soulmate is big, taller than he is factoring in the difference of skates and the stands, with big hands now hooked through the belt loops of his jeans. He looks nothing like home, face all angles, dominated by dark eyes with a gracious plenty of eyelashes under stark brows and floppy black hair, but Dima is prepared to learn every detail. It will take him a while to learn enough English to say so, though, so he waves and says, “Dmitry!”

His soulmate ducks his head to smile at him, sounding like something from a children’s cartoon that can only say its own name. “Dmitry,” he says, to practice. “Hello, Dmitry. I’m Matt.”

“Hi Matt,” Dima says. By now he’s close enough to lean against the glass, but he looks for a gap between the sheets of plexiglass first, and Matt follows him on the other side. When Dima bumps his forehead against the glass they’re at the right height so Matt lay a hand on his hair,but Matt bends down to keep eye contact with him instead. Dima wave his hand again, and then sneaks his fingers through the gap to brush together.

“The bench is right over there, you could go get cleaned up and come out on this side,” Matt says. Dima gets warm amusement from it and just shrugs broadly, nothing to say for himself. He wiggles his fingers, and Matt smiles and runs a careful thumb over them. “I guess I knew you’d be younger,” he says. “Didn’t think…we lost our last game too and I just wanted to get home, and then I guess I was moping so Mom said I could come see the tournament if I really didn’t have better to do.” His mind, which Dima can tell is usually neat, is a mess of half-baked ideas to fix the fundamental problem of living on almost exactly opposite sides of the world.

“I’m eighteen,” Dima says, getting the gist. He pushes a mental armful of excitement at him. “Gonna be. Draft this summer.”

“Oh, wow,” Matt says. He turns his face against the glass, closing his eyes, lashes fluttering. “You’re a lot, huh? But you’re good, I was thinking even before…teams are going to want you, and we weren’t so hot this season but….”

Dima, unlike Zhenya, is not a fanboy and has no opinions on where he gets drafted as long as he gets to play. He shrugs more broadly, to make Matt laugh.

“Sorry, I’m overthinking everything and you don’t even know. I’m not always…well I’m often like this. You’re an optimist, huh? I guess looking at it that way maybe meeting now is a sign it’s going to work out in July. So just do your best to get drafted by the Stars, okay?”


	2. Chapter 2

  
  


“I don’t just _ think_,” Vova says. “I know my soulmate is American.”

Zhenya Evgenyevich has to tip his head up to meet his eyes, but it doesn’t matter because he seems to stand that way all the time anyway, chin up against the world. “You know everything, huh,” he says reflectively. “What do you even need anybody else for?”

It doesn’t matter, because Vova doesn’t care. But for a second it cracks like a slap, the same sort of thing his father snaps when Vova challenges a coaching decision mid-game, or suggests he knows his workout better than someone who’s been doing it for thirty years. 

Maybe it was luck, or maybe it’s just Zhenya being clever. But he only needed a moment to know Vova well enough to see exactly how to cut into him. A soulmate would know something like that, though Vova hopes they wouldn’t want to. 

But Vova has always felt a pull toward the sunset, bright but faint, much further than whatever mill town the kid is from. He can feel it now, something warm all around him in the air of this cold place. He wishes it were something he could catch between his hands, drag out and show Zhenya to make him understand, like maybe if Vova could prove it he’d turn those sharp eyes away, or maybe even say that Vova’s right, that his bond _ is _ good enough. 

Vova knows he’s pathetic for approval, but he doesn’t know how to stop. 

Part of him wants to say something to hurt back.

“Leave Dima out of it,” he says instead. Zhenya just stays, squinting up at him like the words Vova picked couldn’t have impressed him less. When Vova meets them, he realizes his eyes look a little glassy, red, like he hasn’t been sleeping. He didn’t for the whole plane flight, which they all knew too well, but no one had thought he might not be enjoying it either. 

“Go to bed,” Vova says. “We’ll…whatever. Practice in the morning.”

“Whatever,” Zhenya says, but he goes. 

The vending machine beeps into the carpeted hush of the long hallway. Vova bends down to take his bottle. He’d only gotten milk, but even when he’s brushed his teeth and is lying in bed trying to sleep before their long flight home he feels buzzy, mouth syrup-sticky. 

Dima meets his soulmate. Vova doesn’t, but when he thinks that he feels them like a hug around him, pride that only gets more pointed when Vova tries to show them he didn’t even win. 

His tongue doesn’t taste sweet anymore. A sudden rush of salt and bitter hit him when Zhenya pushed up on his toes and kissed Dima on the mouth. It lasted longer than it really needs to, Zhenya licking in past Dima’s cracked and probably sweaty lips, but it looked like an okay kiss. It’s okay. Dima skated off in a daze to kiss somebody else and Vova took his silver medal so he has something to bite.

Sibir’s season is already done when they come home. The rest of the team peel away slowly, and Vova travels most of the way back toward Novosibirsk with Dima. 

He hears that he lost Rookie of the Year for the KHL not long after landing. Second place. His father says that doesn’t matter, you have to set a new goal, higher. Dima flies back to America a few weeks after that, as Vova is still sorting his tangled socks out of his suitcase. He keeps being interrupted because he’s left in charge of his little brother now school’s out and Valyusha is determined to fall out every window in the apartment, propped open to let the sticky air inside. Vova tells him to go wash and count potatoes for Baba to make into dinner when she gets home, waits until he hears happy splashing to stick his own head outside for a minute to breathe.

The sense of something he found in Minnesota has faded again but hasn’t gone, like gingerbread baking in another apartment, drifting down to him. He must be the same distance he’s always been from his soulmate, since Baba and Dedushka moved them all out here to Novosibirsk to rejoin his father. There’s no reason to feel stretched thin.

The Washington Capitals take Dima. Good luck, Dedushka says, to have such talent like Ovechkin and Syomin to lift you up. Vova’s father says that’s no luck at all, if no one will remember to say your name after theirs. Vova hasn’t told them that he and Dima are particular friends, they just go through the results and measure everyone like that, breaking them down into smaller and smaller parts.

He fixes his gaze on the flickering television, keeps chewing his breakfast. He can’t remember if Dima liked the Capitals, if he said he used to watch Ovechkin as a kid or still does. They had made fun of the fanboys, but they all did a little. He doesn’t know if that makes a difference to Dima now, or if every team looks the same when it’s not the one he wanted. Dima’s soulmate is still in Texas, which Vova thinks must be as far away as Chelyabinsk is from Novosibirsk, maybe more.

He messages Dima later on LiveJournal, but he doesn’t have much to say. That’s one thing they have in common. He has to sign off the shared computer before long anyway to head downstairs to lift weights, and the rest of the year passes like that.

In December he turns eighteen, and this time they want him for the Junior national team. A week after his birthday he heads to Moscow and then North America, the Canadian west this time. 

The plains aren’t so different from Siberia, but as soon as he steps off the plane into the wet winter wind it feels warm without real heat, like cinnamon and ginger. He stops, turning toward it, and then just as he catches hold of it a sharp elbow plants in the small of his back. Vova turns the rest of the way to steady him, unsurprised to find Zhenya Evgenyevich wobbling under a hockey bag heavier than he is. It’s not taller, at least, not anymore—Zhenya only glances up a few centimeters to say “Sorry,” and Vova isn’t sure which of those things surprises him, but something must, because his soulmate feels it and sends him something like a squeeze.

Dima is asking him if he played a new game over the summer, the goalies are throwing their bags around, and up ahead someone is picking a fight about a deke Datsyuk tried earlier in the month. As soon as Vova steps aside Zhenya slithers around him and disappears into the middle of it. 

They play the first night. First is always good. Not because it settles Vova’s heartbeat, but at least there’s something concrete to blame, instead of waiting. They only have to sit long enough for the Swedes to bully ten goals out of the Czechs. Vova looks out of the corners of his eyes and thinks some of the guys aren’t so happy to follow the show, but no one’s saying so.

His centre has been appointed to be Sasha Olegovich, who played with them in Minnesota last year, with one of the three Maxims on the other side. More often than not, Vova can feel Dima’s steady weight behind him. All he has to wait for is Dima to find a path to him, and then Vova has to find the power to finish it. Dima doesn’t like waiting either.

Two of the Maxims get them two goals, first Maxim Rudolfovich in the opening minute, and then a penalty for Austria that Vova can’t kill ties it up, before Maxim Valeryevich pulls them ahead on a power play of their own. Vova bites down on his mouthguard as he watches those power play minutes from the bench. Other guys are older. It only makes sense to give them the most time on the power play. Sense tastes like salt in his mouth.

Out on the ice Dima is restless too, muscling his way up with the puck. He sends it as hard as he can and it’s Zhenya Evgenyevich who swoops in on it. Vova isn’t entirely sure what he does with the thing but it gets them their next goal, and maybe Austria are just as confused because they quickly take a too many men penalty. This time it goes on long enough that Vova and Dima get to go out, and between the two of them it feels like they can crash through anything. Vova gets the goal, Dima another assist. Everyone’s happy in the locker room and then as they start the next period Zhenya Evgenyevich slithers in again. His trick works better this time than it had on the bus. 

Once the game’s over and they’re settled in their rooms, Vova has nothing he needs to do. There’s no point calling on the first night. If they win their way into the finals, Dedu might stay up and want a call to talk through how they’re doing. If they don’t, they’ll know. Dima bumps his shoulder for attention before looking at the hotel phone, and Vova has to smile at him. 

He gets up off his bed, which maybe Dima wasn’t expecting, but Vova finds he really does want to walk. He gathers his coat and key card as Dima pounces on the phone, punching in the number his soulmate must have given him. He cradles it to his ear, not saying anything yet, and Vova closes the door behind him before he can overhear. 

Walking feels good. He doesn’t have to go far to find stars, pausing between street lights lining the road. The nearest thing is another motel on another block of snow, then the highway. The night air is cold enough out to feel it on his face and creeping down his collar when he tips his head up to the sky, not enough to sink through his jacket. There’s less of a pull than there was in Minnesota.

He pushes up on his toes toward the stars, stretching out his ankle. He hadn’t noticed it had been aching, and then he knows it hasn’t been. In the back of his head, his soulmate rustles around like a mouse, startled in their nest. 

“I’m sorry,” Vova says. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” His soulmate shakes that off. They’d only been dozing, not sleeping well. Then they realize that doesn’t sound better. 

“I didn’t know you were hurt,” Vova says. His soulmate seems to sigh. It might be more of a pout. But Vova walks on toward the next light, and eventually starts to sing one of Valyusha’s lullabies under his breath. They stay until his soulmate’s presence softens into sleep, and Vova is ready too.

They beat Finland, but Sweden brings their gun show. The Czechs are easier to crack when they play on New Year’s Eve. One of their As, a defenseman whose facial hair could qualify for the men’s team on its own, gets called for roughing, and Vova is gifted another chance at the power play. He gets the first goal. 

His teammates can’t resist more penalties, a game misconduct for a stupid check from their own A, and Zhenya tries to hook the biggest possible opponent. The Czechs tie it, but as Vova’s bent over the boards watching it play out he can feel Coach tap his line to go. They spill over, and his eyes are already fixed on the target, the path to get there, a moving gap. He gets another goal at even strength. Then Maxim Valeryevich, and then Vova’s line are back out in the last minute, and he and Maxim Alexeyevich can set Sasha Olegovich up for the closer.

There are worse presents. 

That night he and Dima eat snacks and stay up a little late, watching things they don’t really understand on the hotel television. The other boys have wandered their own ways, most to call family, some gathering in their own rooms down the hall, listening with various degrees of willingness and laughter as Zhenya sings in the new year. At some point Dima throws an arm out and Vova pillows his head on his friend’s biceps. He wonders what their soulmates are doing for New Years, if they do much of anything, here in North America. It seems unfair to Dima, to have to be here instead of finding out, but Vova looks up at his profile, watching whatever’s on, and thinks someday he will. Someday Vova will, too. He’s never thought that with such certainty before.

They get a day off to rest, before losing to Switzerland. At least it’s not to Latvia. Vova gets a final goal for the tournament, but not when they need one in overtime. 

After that there’s only the fifth-place playoff left for them to lose, and they do. At least they get two more goals for Sasha Olegovich out of it. He’s going to be up for the same NHL draft as Vova, this summer, and Maxim Alexeyevich too. People say Maxim will go high, but Vova thinks Sasha deserves it too. He hopes their line did enough to show the people who matter. 

The plane home is too quiet. Dima is a lump beside him. Vova watches shadows in the darkness out the window and wonders about his two-goal game. He knows he could have got a third, he’s almost sure he could. If only he could be older already, bigger, whatever it is that everyone wants. It’s not like him to let himself think that way, but it’s like he can’t switch it off. At least Zhenya is silent tonight.

When he gets home he hugs his brother, kisses their baba’s cheek in thanks, eats what she has waiting for him. In February everything shuts down for the Olympic teams to fly off to Vancouver, so he spends the month waiting and eating and lifting, too. Sibir’s season was past saving by then, but they’re pronounced in March. He keeps eating, keeps up his pace. He thinks he can feel another growth spurt coming, tries to will it on, but the problem is when. He might be as tall as his father already, but that isn’t enough for the NHL. It feels like a selfish thought but it seems self-evident too—how can his father know what Vova should be to do something he never did?

By June he’s on another plane to Toronto. 

Dima sent him several encouraging GIFs before he had to leave for his flight. When he lands Sasha, Maxim Alexeyevich and Zhenya are already at the hotel that’s been arranged for them all. The others will be coming soon, but they’ve been invited to the scouts’ Combine test. Vova meets up with them in the morning. He feels twitchy under his skin, not nervous so much as annoyed he can’t decide how nervous to be. Max and Sasha are looking good, big, when they and Vova clasp each other’s shoulders, like they spent the months lifting and praying for something like what Vova did. Max is making a face like Vova’s little brother does when he’s about to be sick. Zhenya already looks like a wet rag someone’s wrung, but he has the same energy as always, and he makes Max laugh a few times over breakfast.

They get changed in a corner, while the North Americans’ noise fills the rest of the room. Maxim wishes them both luck, but Zhenya pretends to catch the words out of the air and blow them back at him. “You can have mine,” he says grandly. “I don’t want to show everyone up, yeah….”

Max balls his street clothes up in his bag and heads out to the floor first, looking a bit better. Sasha follows. Vova has to finish fussing with his socks, and Zhenya is now fully focused on folding his things.

“Good luck, though,” Vova tells his profile. “For real.”

Zhenya looks up at him. His oversized eyebrows are set, and Vova thought he could tell it was fake before but he doesn’t know now.

“I really don’t need it,” Zhenya says in a low voice, like anyone’s listening but the two of them. “You know I’m going to go out there and be absolutely terrible.”

Vova has to cover a giggle.

“No, I know. I’m going to fall down, I’m sure, and they’ll see. And they’ll see me get up. That’s what they want to know, is your character. And you want that too. There’s no point going somewhere that just wants you because you threw big things, or whatever,” Zhenya says.

“Are you saying I should try to do badly?” Vova asks, maybe trying to tease, but Zhenya sighs.

“I’m pretty sure you’re incapable,” he says. “But that’s your character, so you’ll show them so, too.” 

He reaches out along the stall bench between them, and Vova bumps their knuckles together.

The testing is what it is, or it would be, if they didn’t have to talk too. Vova just tries to be honest with everyone, knowing the team representatives he talks to aren’t promising anything yet. There’s no point getting into some complicated game with them, but he doesn’t think he’s giving too many of his thoughts away either, because he doesn’t have much to give. Still, by the end he feels like he’s talked to all thirty teams, though he hasn’t come close. Zhenya did, though. 

The draft itself is another long flight away and a seemingly longer maze of a conference center in Los Angeles. Vova and Maxim fist-bumped for luck that morning, and if he cranes his head he can see him in the next bank of seats, with a few relatives. Everyone’s scattered among the North Americans and their families. Vova’s sitting with his agent and his agent’s family. He doesn’t have to look to find Zhenya giggling with a few of the more optimistic national team guys who might be taken today, and he doesn’t.

The first seven names mean something to the rest of the room, and the eighth is Sasha. Vova almost jumps up to cheer but manages to lurch back into his seat, looking at everyone around them and clapping a little instead. Somehow the first seven names took forever and then seven more take no time, because he’s still peeking around to check no one saw him try to jump when he hears his own name.

His new GM crushes his fingers in a bearhug he seems to call a handshake, and Vova squeezes back. Maybe his top Combine score in grip strength impressed them. For a few seconds he’s scared the sweater he’s given won’t fit over his shoulders, but it’s the most beautiful shade of blue.

After a few photos, he’s sent out back of the stage to join everyone ahead of him for more photos and hard handshakes and praise from people he doesn’t know who want him to do various things. Sasha bumps his shoulder, grinning, and Vova slings an arm around his, allowing himself to think for a minute that it was their line, together, that made them 

He doesn’t hear the rest of the names, but only a few more North Americans come through the stage door to join them before it’s Zhenya poking his head around the corner. When he emerges he’s wearing a sweater as bloody red as Vova’s is blue. Of all the teams he talked to, the Washington Capitals wanted him. 

Good luck, Vova thinks, or no luck. Zhenya had given his away.

They wait, but Maxim doesn’t come through that door.


End file.
